The Black Mask
by Never Believe the Believable
Summary: She ran as fast as she could. She really did. Mother nature must have been laughing at her... Until her black masked hero makes an appearance. Tenten/Neji. Feudal era.


Ok, don't ask me where I got this from... I have no clue, either. As you will soon be able to tell, this is in the OLD days... Like, feudal era. And, of course, it's in Japan (duh -.-). This one is about Tenten and Neji, my favourite couple in the Naruto series grins.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor do I own Tenten and Neji (unfortunately).

--

She ran.

At the moment, it was the only thing she could do. Although this is true, that did not make it any easier. She winced as her bare feet made contact with the forest ground; wooden sandals long gone. To matters worse, her multi-layered ('_Too many layers!_' she mused furiously) kimono, in all its beauty, must have weighed a ton, for it only allowed her to achieve half the distance she normally would.

"Stupid nobles," she hissed in a hushed tone, "Stupid nobles and their stupid traditions and their stupid rules!! I just had to be the one they chose to do the ceremony for that friggin' kami no kaze (1)!!"

She growled softly as her long, wavy, brown locks began to fall out of their neat order at the top of her head and into her face; effectively obscuring her vision. Sharply throwing her head to the side in an attempt to whip the offending hair away from her face, she tried to fish her hands out from the outrageously large (or so she thought) sleeves of her silk kimono. Of course, she never got the chance for at that second the dreaded sleeves got caught on a thin, but strong branch resulting in having herself yanked ('_With some seriously absurd strength_,' she mentally and bitterly noted) in the same direction she had been running from.

A dull _thud _was heard as her back and backside ("Argh!" she whispered) contacted harshly with the ground ("For all the layers this thing has," she whined, "You'd think it would _at least_ cushion the fall a little, but noooo…"). She laid there, far too tired to even attempt to untangle herself from the branches, never mind to get back up and run again. Her thoughts wandered to the previous events and _why _she was being chased by an enraged kami no kaze. 'Her' mistake was not actually her mistake, per se; it was her brother's.

Really. It was.

All she had to do was look pretty in her (now torn and thoroughly soiled) white and sky blue kimono and present to the marble statue a bowl of boiling hot water ("'Be caaaaaareful, Tenten-hime (2), it's purificaaaaation water.' Pssh," she childishly mimicked the temple priest and rolled her eyes). She had been doing quite well until her twelve-year-old brother decided it was the perfect time to tug on his seventeen-year-old sister's kimono. Of course, (since she already had little to none in the way of balance) she tumbled and promptly splashed the entire contents of the bowl onto the marble statue.

No one had moved for a good two minutes until a deafening rawr almost broke their eardrums. And where did it come from? The statue. The dragon-shaped statue.

So basically: A very mad wind god that favours the form of a dragon...That's the definition of 'doom', right there.

As she recalled, her father had addressed the god nervously, "I – I know you are quite angry, Kami-sama, but –"

"You call that 'angry'?" her brother had interrupted, rudely. The boy daringly gave the fuming spirit a blank look, "I call that _pissed_."

And pissed he was.

She had ran as fast as she could because it was well known amongst the villagers and nobles that the dragon would bite your head off. Literately.

Back to her present state (sprawled out on the dirt ground of a dense forest), she tensed as she heard the rustling wind and several cracking branches. Using all the willpower and physical strength she could muster, she scrambled to her feet and continued her clumsy attempt at running until she found a large clearing. She briefly wandered if she should risk it and just run across the clearing. A rawr in the not-so-far distance silenced any doubt she had. She quickly broke through the think line of trees and ran about half-way into the open area and–

–tripped on a rather large rock. Slowly sitting up, dragon momentarily forgotten, she stared in disbelief at the, seemingly, innocent rock. What was _with_ her and _tripping_?! Another rawr caused her to jerk her head up to meet a huge and pissed (as her brother so kindly stated) wind dragon. She was caught.

'…Well, shit,' she thought, slightly confused (even SHE did not know if that thought was meant to be filled with panic or sarcasm).

Just as the dragon was ready to lung for her, he froze. Whipping his long and elegant head to face the sky, his blue eyes stared and silently waited.

Meanwhile, the girl sat in confusion as the dragon's mood quickly changed from angry to somewhat… calm. Maybe even expecting. She too razed her head to the sky and waited. It did not take long for her to be able to see what had caught the large dragon's attention. '_Mist?_' she mentally questioned.

Mist. Above their heads was a large cloud of mist that seemed to be coming together to form a shape. Her eyes widened as the mist traveled to a spot in front of her, guarding her from the dragon. That is when it took its new form.

Twists and turns were made as the mist entangled itself together to finally form the shape of a boy about the girl's age. He stood tall in his traditional white and black robes. Long, silky, black hair flowed freely in the gentle wind as pearly moon-like eyes peered at the dragon through a full, black, porcelain mask. Without a thought or word, he serenely walked (Although it looked like he was barely touching the ground, she noticed) towards the, still, calm spirit. Stopping short of two feet away from his target, the boy gently laid a pale hand on the dragons nose, lightly petting the creature. The creature in question closed its eyes and sighed contently as he stared to fade into the breezed.

The girl blinked. Now, why hadn't she thought of that? '_Oh, right,_' she acknowledged dully, '_The pointy teeth did nothing for my sanity at the time._'

"Tenten-hime."

Tenten jumped at the deep, but soothing, voice. Truth be told, she had almost forgotten her name (3) for a second there. Looking up, she saw that the boy had knelt in front of her. Silently pointing to his black, porcelain mask, she heard him ask, "If you'd please." She blinked, but raised her hands nonetheless and rested them on either side of his mask, lightly curling her fingers around the edges. He waited patiently as Tenten gingerly removed the mask to reveal a pale, emotionless and handsome face. The said face changed slightly to give her a soft smile. She blushed deeply as he swiftly stood up in front of her. Blinking at the now outstretched hand, her confused eyes found his unreadable ones as she silently spoke her question.

His small smile never changed, nor did his hand move, as he responded with a quiet and wistful answer, "Let us fly, together."

It was her turn to smile as she gently laid her hand in his.

And fly they did.

--

(1) I wrote it like this to seem more like a TYPE of god, rather than the actual name (Kaminokaze, or better known as Fūjin). Kami means 'god' and Kaze means 'wind'. So litterately, "The god of wind". As you will later see, I did not portray Fūjin as he is originally described as… Oh well.  
(2) '-hime' is equivalent to adding 'Princess' before a woman/girl's name. So 'Tenten-hime' would be 'Princess Tenten'.  
(3) And apparently, so did I -.-…. I totally forgot her name until then and I was like O.O Oops…

Tell me if you liked it.

[EDIT][Dear. LORD...... I re-read this since one of my friends recently reviewed it and was horrified to see the obvious spelling mistakes O__O.... Most are fixed. If there are more, PLEASE tell me.]


End file.
